Sunday, November 16, 2008

scenario 1
- late for church and rushing down the long corridor and stopped with the following exchange:

women "awww, what a cute baby"
me "thanks"
women "but her feet must be so cold! You should put some socks on her"
me "her feet are fine"
I rush past her.

scenario 2
- in Barnes and Noble getting coffee and magazines when accosted by another concerned women with the following exchange:

woman "awww, what a cute baby"
me "thanks"
women looks at baby and coos in baby talk voice, "are your little feet cold", looks at me, you should put socks on her!"
me - silence
women bumbles on "I love it when they are that age, so small and cute, do you stay home with her, or work?" as she cocks her head
me - "my husband stay's home with her"
women's eyes bulge in surprise "really, so I guess that makes you the bread earner"
me - "I guess so"
women - "so what do you do?"
me - "I work for a toy company"
women tries to process this very complicated situation and nods knowingly "so you must make good money doing that"
me with desperate look of horror babbles "it's fun and my husband works on the weekends and while I stay home with baby"
woman - looks relieved that husband is not a deadbeat, breaths a huge sigh of relief and says "oh well that's okay"
me - big pause, searching for an exit line "okay well you have a nice day now"

Folks - I live in South Florida, it's 75F/24C outside and inside every building it's the same temperature it is every day. Sun's out and every time I get in my car I turn the air conditioner on. I must have a sign on my forehead that says "It's my birthday, tell me how to dress my child!"

Yesterday, baby and I slept an inexplicably long time. She had woken up around 6:30 (I had fed her at 5:30) and I wanted to sleep longer so I tucked her into the big bed with lots of padding surrounding her and we both went back to sleep. I thought it was only for an hour so when I finally woke up with a dry mouth and urgent need for water, I was astonished to find it was 8:20, husband should be gone for work since 8 but I stumble out to find him frantically searching for his wallet. Maybe it's in your truck I suggest. He goes out through the garage door and the cats happily race through the open door catching the 2nd cat's tail - he barely made a sound and that's when you know a cat is hurt. That and his body language as he flicks his tail and blood around the room. The cut is deep and it looks like the tail might need amputation or stitches so husband hustles the cat into a cat carrier and off to the vet.

Back story - the injured cat is Zorak, our oldest pet of 10 years. He's a 19lb gruff, sourpuss but we are fond of him.

Shortly after husband departs, I find his wallet under the bed. I collect baby, her stuff, Chopper the dog (he goes to work with husband who is a dog trainer and uses our dog for lessons), husband's lunchbox and follow. Haven't had breakfast but adrenaline rush seems to fill the void.

We arrive to the vet, which is located in a store that is actually husband's prior place of work and I sit baby's carrier on a bench, hand dog leash to husband and go back to car for his wallet.

Back story - earlier that morning, at 6am, husband gave himself a military haircut, one that I guess he had not had since before baby was born.

I come back to baby crying her horrified cry of "I don't know you, I don't want to know you and where is my MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" She didn't recognize her dad with the new haircut - ha, you gotta laugh. Meanwhile the cat is doing his pain meow and we are all waiting for the vet to arrive.

Baby stays upset as husband's old co-workers come over and say hi so I grab the baby and breastfeed her since she hadn't eaten since 5:30. Husband checks in the cat and leaves for work, I'm abandoned on a bench, breastfeeding baby. There is no one in the store that early so I'm basically left in my own little world.

We take our time and when finished I walk her over to see the birds and fish. She had a really great time.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

You might recall my last trip to Orlando was an adventure in breast pumping in public bathrooms whist making my boss and co-works wait for me and it was all kinds of fun. Well this November trip was an overnighter with just me and the girls. So armed with with the company credit card we set forth to do as much damage, ur productivity as possible.

We started the trip right by leaving a 1/2 hour late because I forgot my cooler filled with dry ice intended to hold all the milk I intended to pump for the next two days. I'm NOT going without my cooler so I picked the girls up at the office and came back home. I had also forgotten $20 for turnpike tolls so I was able to come home and collect both items and got to see baby awake - so cute!

First BP stop was the turnpike bathroom. Not my favorite stop but came up with a great idea for future trips. You know those beach chairs that fold up neatly into a bag with sling so you can carry them over your shoulder? That chair is going into my car for next trip. I can see it now, beach chair in the handicap bathroom! Perfect!

We got to Universal Studios 1/2 hour late and the meeting had to start at 11am. We didn't have alot to go over so didn't figure we were going to cut into lunch too terribly much but after asking our client about his vacation and discussing the historic election we managed to finish at 1:30pm. Starving we drive to Chick Fil A for lunch and I use their bathroom for 2nd BP stop and this time drag a chair into the bathroom.

We all forgot to ask for tickets (we are supposed to ask 1-2 weeks in advance) so we went back to the offices where our client had agreed to drive us into the park the back way on those little golf carts. That's fun - getting in the park for free and transportation all the way in! We stayed for two hours and looked for product options to enhance our product line - AND we rode the new Simpsons ride with our client who took us to the front of the line! Did I mention he is our favorite client??? Seriously this guy is too cool.

After Universal we spent an hour getting lost while finding the hotel - did I mention we had GPS on one girls Apple phone??? I'm driving and all I hear is go forward so I can see which way the ball is moving, okay you went the wrong way now do a U turn. It says go NORTH, which way is NORTH??? We are all geographically stupid.

After locating the hotel and doing my 3rd BP of the day, we head to downtown Disney and get lost along the way. Finally arrive to buy reference samples, admire our products and eat at Wolfgang Puck and here is where I swear to never go to that restaurant again. It's overpriced, LOUD!!! and I'm just so tired of the menu. Every trip to Disney I go to this restaurant and I don't care how tired I am (or lost), I'm going to find a better restaurant. Orlando is the restaurant capital of the world, seriously they have every possible variety of food and top chefs. It ends now.

Next day we have more meetings with another client, my mommy friend pre-reserved a room for me to use between morning meetings and we take our client out to lunch. Pause for insert story.

I look very young, I can pass for a collage student in my early twenties when in fact I'm early thirties. I know this so I tend to notch my clothing up a bit when I'm leading a meeting, particularly one where I've invited the client to lunch. I get to the restaurant first and tell the hostess to inform the waiter that I'm bringing a client to lunch and would he please bring the bill to me. I position myself at the right top side of the table. At the end of the meal, the waiter bounces around me and puts the bill in front of the client whereupon I take it from him while in mid-sentence and proceed to pay the bill. Is it really necessary for waiters to assume the oldest person at the table is going to pay???

We finish our meetings and make an afternoon stop at my favorite restaurant on the way out of Orlando - Mimi's, for my last BP break. It was a lovely stop with the sweetest waitress I've ever had. One girl inexplicably ordered Pot Pie to go and then realized there was no possible way to get it out of the crockery and into the take out container. The waitress, spotting our situation came over and popped the entire dish into the take out tray and told us to not bring the crockery back. I ordered two muffins to go and she gave them to me for free saying they throw more than that away at the end of the night. After consuming a latte and half a sandwich, we headed back to our neck of Florida.

I gotta say, business trips as a mom are really quite complex, that and I'm totally getting a GPS now that the economy is tanking and everything is 1/2 off in stores for this holiday season.

It was a recent morning and I had just returned from walking Chopper, our small cute Cavalier King Charles when I noticed my neighbor frozen in place in front of her car. I heard two girls yelling don't move and noticed they were hiding behind cars, then I spotted the Pit Bull wandering aimlessly around the parking lot. I didn't see him acting aggressively so I called out to the neighbor to ask if it was her dog, she said no and that brought the dog's attention to me and he came over to say hi to my dog, who freaked out a little and shrank against the door on the wrong side so I had to wrestle him in the house while the big dog poked his nose at my little dog. The Pit Bull was nice and seemed well taken care of so I figured someone had lost their dog.

I came inside and got the trash and on my way to the dumpster encountered a short Asian guy looking for the dog. I told him it was freaking out the neighbors and he really needed to get it on a leash and back inside. He said it wasn't his dog and he had visited a friends house who was away and upon opening the door the dog ran out and sat on his car and would I like to have the dog? Okay this dog is easily 100 lbs and kinda bulky to jump up on a vehicle and isn't this the guy who owns a Hummer and those things are tall and why is he trying to give away the dog??? this is just too strange. The dog had disappeared by this point so I came back inside and woke up husband to tell him about it. He immediately goes outside to search for the dog and we see Pumpkin's mom (I don't know my neighbor's name but I know her dogs name - cool huh?) holding her small dog and rushing back to her condo, "PIT BULL" she screams! So we know where to start looking for the dog. I feel like a total dork because I saw her start her walk when I came back in from the trash and should have warned her. See people are scared of Pit Bulls and really don't know the difference between a happy dog and a bad dog.

Husband's gone for awhile collecting the dog while I wake baby and make breakfast. He finally comes back with dog in tow just as short Asian guy walks up to us. He kinda mumbles great you found him, you can have the dog and takes off. So husband calls the phone number on the dog's collar and the dog's mom cries and thanks us for finding him. Apparently he had been dog napped from her backyard the day before and is a blue blood.

Now when I see short Asian guy running as I do my morning walk I give him the raised eyebrow.

Friday, November 14, 2008

to pump milk used to sound like a horrific nightmare. How could I ever get used to getting up in the middle of the night, every night and stay awake for 15 minutes??? Well I've been doing it since Charlotte was born and now I actually enjoy it. It's the only 15 minutes of the entire 24 hour period that's totally mine to surf the internet, get caught up on blogs, write mine, etc. No one is awake but the dog. He shuffles over to our bedroom door every night in hopes that his favorite person, my husband, will also get up and join us.

Many times I find myself hanging out past the 15 minutes necessary to pump. It's my time and I relish it!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

On Nov. 2nd I had the privilege to hear Doctor Bob Barns speak at Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, bring a notepad. He offers so many nuggets of information that you will want to remember.

The title was called "The Sermon of the Mouth".

Your mouth is a powerful tool. It is able to bring pain, anger, frustration to people around you. Or one kind word of encouragement will change lives.

This really spoke to me because obviously from my earlier post, I've been careless with my mouth in the past. It's something I've really struggled with!

Some of the points mentioned are:
- who's arms are you lifting up?
- are you guarding your mouth?
- if someone said make a list of all the great encouragers would you be on anyone's list?
- the Bible says we will be accountable for every idol word we speak on judgement day.

Ep. 4:31 Get rid of every form of malace, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking, be put away from you.

and the one I memorized as a child

Ep. 4:32 And be ye kind one to another tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

This is one of those messages that convicts and motivates. Later that day I went to a coffee shop and made a long list of things I want to do to encourage others in my life.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Last weekend my mother-in-law came into to town for the weekend. I made big plans. The closer the visit got the grander my plans were made. I counted down the hours until total freedom to "get some stuff done".

Saturday afternoon I picked her up at the airport with Charlotte dressed in a pretty dress with a bib displaying "I love Grandma". We went straight to my favorite afternoon restaurant and at 3pm there was no one there. I pulled Charlotte out of her car seat and proudly handed her to her grandmother. She was polite for about 10 minutes until we had ordered our food and suddenly she had a wild screaming fit like none I had ever seen before. Her grandmother did everything imaginable to calm the baby, giving her a bottle which Charlotte refused to take even though I know she was hungry; after what seemed five minutes of nothing working I offered to try. She immediately calmed down and took the bottle from me. The rest of the day went as such. Charlotte would grin happily at her grandmother across the table but refused to be held.

So the next day I did the only thing logical, I left for the entire day so she could bond with her grandmother. Everything went fine!

Now I know what goes on in the church nursery! Today I dropped her off and told them I'd swing back in 10-15 minutes to check on her. See they don't put the child's number up on the big screen until mid-way through the service so she could be crying for 30-40 minutes without me knowing. I came back and she was having a terrible time of it so we retreated into the nursing mom's room.

It's tough! I didn't expect this from my little girl so soon. She's only 4 1/2 months old and she has such a strong preference for mom and dad.

I must admit it's a confirming moment of connection for a new mom to be able to calm her baby so completely and quickly when said child is seemingly inconsolable. I've been reading a book recommended by Potty Mummy, "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt and the overall theme is to regulate the babies levels so he/she can learn to be emotionally independent. It's awesome to be able to calm her down but at the same time, I'm going to keep taking her to church because I want her to learn to regulate her own levels and gain some independence from mommy and daddy.